In answer, Kakashi sheathed both swords and dropped immediately into an attentive crouch, watching her with one bright eye. Katsuko didn’t tease him; she was caught up too, eager to show him the intricacies of the style she’d been learning since she was old enough to hold a blade.

Her arm was still in its damn sling, but she undid the straps and tossed the whole contraption aside. It was only practice forms, not an actual fight, and her arm could use the limbering up. She stretched a little and drew her kodachi and her katana, savoring the feeling of having a sword in each hand again, and walked to the center of the training field.

The first kata, in deference to a beginner’s level, only faced her off against four imaginary opponents. Every kata was a precisely choreographed dance of attack and defense set on different hypothetical battlefields. The first kata, again in deference to the beginner, set her on the fairly easy surroundings of a field at night.

Katsuko took a moment to settle herself, then bowed, saluted her imaginary opponents, and slid into the opening moves of the kata. Hyoho Niten specialized in fighting multiple enemies at once; her imaginary opponents would attack in sets of two or more, never alone. The tall grass of the field required she use broad, sweeping movements to clear her way and flush out hidden opponents, leaping high to see above her enemies’ heads.

A set of crescent blocks and sweeps, yin and yang, attacking and retreating as inevitably as a storm. The first kata introduced the concept of two blades working in tandem, one sword moving to cover a hole in her guard while the other attacked and parried. She slammed the blades together in a cross-block and spun, sweeping her phantom opponent’s feet out from underneath him before beheading him as he fell.

Her second opponent died two moves after the first. The ending of the kata was devoted to a game of cat and mouse between her and her last two enemies, where she traded off who was the hunter and who was the hunted in a hurricane blur of steel. It finished with a brutal leap-parry-slash, her swords gleaming under the rising moonlight.

Katsuko let out a breath and bowed to signal the end of her dance, blood singing in her veins in a way it hadn’t for a very long time.